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David L. Rice Library Newsletter Fall 2019
Fall 2019
Mona Meyer, Editor
WHAT’S INSIDE: Meet Our New Staff Member: pg. 3 | SOAR: pg. 5
ArchiveSFEST Since 2006, archivists in the United States have celebrated American Archives Month in October. According to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), it “cares for 15 billion sheets of paper, 43 million photographs, miles and miles of video and film and billions of electronic records. Like many of our archival colleagues at state and local levels, we face similar challenges of increasing volumes of electronic records—the fastest growing record form, while also undergoing budget and staffing constraints.” While University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) certainly isn’t as large as NARA, it still plays its part by celebrating American Archives Month with its annual event: ArchivesFest. The following local institutions were invited to display favorite items from their collections: Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science, Reitz Home Museum, Willard Library, Angel Mounds State Historic Site, John M. Lawrence ’73 Library (at USI), Evansville Wartime Museum, Newburgh Museum, USS LST Ship Memorial, Working Men’s Institute, Historic New Harmony, Lincoln Pioneer Village and Museum, and the Evansville African American Museum. Continued on page 2
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The Golden Spike by Mona Meyer This year marks the 150th anniversary of the laying of the golden spike—the final joining of the eastbound Central Pacific Railroad and the westbound Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah. On May 10, 1869, the transcontinental railroad joined the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this nation for the first time.
Prior to the discovery of gold in California, the American West was viewed as worthless---miles and miles of emptiness, a blank slate. Once there was a compelling reason to venture west, travelers faced a daunting trek. Traversing this distance had been a long and perilous endeavor. Traveling cross country meant joining a wagon train in Kansas or Missouri and entrusting your well being to a leader who followed unmarked trails known only by prior experience or guesswork. The farther west one traveled, the farther away one was from readily available supplies. Pioneers called one stretch the “40-mile desert”—40 miles from the Humboldt River to the Truckee River without a drop of water. For the unprepared or unlucky traveler, this meant up to four days without water for humans and livestock. Weather was an ever-present hazard. An estimated one out of every 15 Continued on page 2
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Golden Spike continued from page 1
ARCHIVESFEST continued from page 1 Here are just a few of the treasures on display in UASC during ArchivesFest. These items and more will be on display in UASC October 14-25. Stop by UASC on the 3rd floor of the library any time MondayFriday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. to view these special treasures from across the tri-state region.
pioneers died from disease, hunger, accident, or raids. Another route involved sailing to Panama and trekking through the jungle to reach the Pacific coast and a northbound ship. (Remember that the Panama Canal was not opened until 1914.) This may have been a shortcut from one side of the continent to the other, but the trip across the isthmus held its own dangers of malaria, yellow fever, and a host of other diseases and hazards. The safest way from the Atlantic to Pacific coast of the United States involved sailing around the southern tip of South America. “Safest” is a relative term as this area is recognized as having some of the worst weather in the world---and the trip was slow. Clearly, the need for a transcontinental railroad was very real. Its accomplishment was an enormous undertaking, and it’s easy to see why its completion was greeted with jubilation. It is the tale of incredibly hard work, horrific conditions, and great sacrifice. It’s also the tale of greed, chicanery, rapaciousness, and inhumanity.
Napoleon Bonaparte letter, 1811, from the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science
Program for 40th anniversary of the first women’s right convention, 1888, from UASC.
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Signed Karl Kae Knecht cartoon from Willard Library.
Lincoln High School letter sweater worn by Catherine Wortham, 1940s, from the Evansville African American Museum.
Although many surveys had been done, no consensus had been reached as to a favored route. A civil engineer named Theodore Judah, who had helped build the first railroad in California, favored a route that followed the 41st parallel. After he received information that provided a somewhat easier route through the mountains, he incorporated the Central Pacific Railroad Company and persuaded four Sacramento businessmen to invest in his dream. Known as the Big Four, they were a hardware wholesaler named Collis P. Huntington; his partner, Mark Hopkins; dry goods merchant Charles Crocker; and future Continued on page 3
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Fall 2019 the Central Pacific Railroad Company would start building in Sacramento and continue east across the Sierra Nevada, while a second company, the Union Pacific Railroad, would build westward from the Missouri River, near the Iowa-Nebraska border. The two lines of track would meet in the middle (the bill did not designate an exact location) and each company would receive 6,400 acres of land (later doubled to 12,800) and $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track built. From the beginning, then, the building of the transcontinental railroad was set up in terms of a competition between the two companies.”
Cynthia Simmons
MEET OUR NEW STAFF MEMBER Rice Library is pleased to introduce our new administrative assistant, Cynthia Simmons. Cynthia is a University of Evansville graduate with a degree in writing. She was a staff writer for the Princeton Daily Clarion, and worked for 26 years at the University of Evansville in university relations. She enjoys reading non-fiction and mysteries, drawing, and is an animal lover. Cynthia is very impressed with the friendly and relaxed atmosphere she finds at USI. She’s only been with the library since September 30 but is looking forward to contributing to our mission. Stop by the Administration office on the 2nd floor and introduce yourself!
Golden Spike continued from page 2 governor of California (and future founder of Stanford University), Leland Stanford. After Judah surveyed the route, he took his maps to Congress in October 1861. Congress, with the Civil War underway, wasn’t much interested, but President Abraham Lincoln was. He saw the importance of railroads for the future of the country, but he also needed support and funding from California to fight the war. “The Pacific Railroad Act [signed July 1, 1863] stipulated that
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Judah soon learned that his partners, the Big Four, had less than honorable intentions. They had no background in railroads, construction, or engineering, but had borrowed heavily to finance the project and were determined to exploit every possible loophole to wring the most money out of the government. They were probably displeased with Judah’s idealism and began to push him out. “In October 1863, Judah sailed for New York to attempt to find investors who would buy out his Sacramento partners. Though he had made the voyage to Panama and Theodore Judah across the isthmus by train many times, he contracted yellow fever during this trip and died on November 2, one week after reaching New York City. Judah did not live to see the Central Pacific begin work; he departed Sacramento for New York a few weeks before the first rail was spiked on October 26, 1863. The Big Four replaced Judah with Samuel Montague and the Central Pacific construction crews began building the line east from Sacramento.” Approaching from the east would be the Union Pacific. As a thank you to Iowa delegates who voted for him in 1860, in November 1863 Lincoln chose Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus. Thomas C. Durant, a former medical doctor who had turned to business to make his fortune, took over the Union Pacific “by buying over $2 million in shares and installing his own man as president. "Doc" Durant created the Crédit Moblier of America, a business front that appeared to be an independent contractor, to construct the railroad. However, Crédit Moblier was owned by Union Pacific investors and, over the next few years, it swindled the government out of tens of millions of dollars by charging extortionate fees for the work. Because the government paid by the mile of track built, Durant also insisted the original route be unnecessarily lengthened, further lining his pockets.” Richard White writes, “The only high roads Durant preferred were those on his railroad. He never took an ethical high road. He betrayed partners, and he betrayed strangers. When there was no low road, he blazed one” (White, p. 19-20). Not that the Central Pacific was any more ethical, as it awarded contracts to one of the Big Four, Charles Crocker. Crocker officially resigned from the Central Pacific’s board, but all members still had their hands in each other’s pockets. It was said that representatives from both railroads “visited Washington with enough cash to help congressmen understand their problems” (Golden Spike pamphlet, 2019). Continued on page 4
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Golden Spike continued from page 3
Work began in earnest after the Civil War ended, and the Union Pacific laid its first track in July 1865. Relatively speaking, the Union Pacific had the easier task. A ready workforce of Civil War veterans was available. The flat terrain made for little preparation for laying track. What it did face was opposition from Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho as these groups saw their way of life threatened. Railroaders invaded homelands, fouled the water, brought disease and decimated the buffalo. “The railroad workers were armed and oftentimes protected by U.S. Calvary and friendly Pawnee Indians, but the workforce routinely faced Native American raiding parties that attacked surveyors and workers, stole livestock and equipment, and pulled up track and derailed locomotives.” Laborers for the Central Pacific faced much harsher terrain and weather conditions in the Sierra Nevadas. In addition, finding laborers proved to be a huge challenge. Population in the west was sparse, meaning that workers, many of whom were Irish immigrants, had to be hired in the east and transported west, at great cost. Once out west, they were lured into easier riches. Although the gold rush had largely petered out, the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859 was still providing great silver mining opportunities in Nevada. Faced with this paucity of workers, Crocker finally settled in desperation upon hiring Chinese immigrants. The general consensus was that Chinese immigrants were too small of stature and too weak to perform manual labor, but a month’s trial period soon put paid to that sentiment. “Within three years, 80 percent of the Central Pacific workforce was made up of Chinese workers, and they proved to be essential to the task of laying the line through the Sierra Nevadas. Once believed to be too frail to perform arduous manual labor, the Chinese workers accomplished amazing and dangerous feats no other workers would or could do. They blasted tunnels through the solid granite -sometimes progressing only a foot a day. They often lived in the tunnels as they worked their way through the solid granite, saving precious time and energy from entering and exiting the worksite each day. “ In addition, Chinese immigrants had their own cooks and
“the dried vegetables, seafood, and variety of meats combined with frequent washing of their clothes and daily bathing [kept] the Chinese from getting ill and [succumbing to] the spread of disease. The Chinese tradition of drinking tea caused their cooks to boil the water and serve the tepid tea throughout the day. This tradition kept them from catching the diseases that would affect other workers after drinking bad water. Drinking tea also kept the Chinese from having the negative impacts that came from drinking alcohol, which was another more commonly used alternative to the bad water.” As noted, the Central Pacific Chinese laborers faced the daunting task of creating 15 tunnels through the
Chinese Worker and Summit Tunnel
granite of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Fall 1866 saw them at Donner Pass to dig the Summit Tunnel—1,659 feet long—a task expected to take three years. Work began on three fronts—from the west, from the east, and from the center out, in both directions. Those working in the center had to be lowered by ropes down manmade shafts 8 ft. wide by 12 ft. deep. As if this work wasn’t hard enough, that year saw 44 separate snowstorms, with a total accumulation of 40 feet. Some workers did nothing but shovel snow. Blasting through the granite was initially done with black powder, a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. “They were routinely lowered down sheer cliff faces in makeshift baskets on ropes where they drilled holes, filled them with explosives, lit the fuse and then were yanked up as Continued on page 7
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The Scholarly Open Access Repository at University of Southern Indiana “Research provides the foundation of modern society. Research leads to breakthroughs, and communicating the results of research is what allows us to turn breakthroughs into better lives—to provide new treatments for disease, to implement solutions for challenges like global warming, and to build entire industries around what were once just ideas.” Many scholars recognize the veracity of this statement from SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, but the problem lies with antiquated publishing models of communication in a digital age. Those who conduct research funded by public dollars want to share their work but are hindered by a number of artificial barriers: technical, legal and financial. These barriers serve to restrict access to only a small number of users, thus prohibiting the widespread dissemination of research results. This bottleneck has led to a call for open access, defined as “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” One way Rice Library is supporting open access is the establishment of the Scholarly Open Access Repository at University of Southern Indiana (SOAR at USI). The repository is an online platform where USI faculty, staff, and students can showcase their research and scholarly work. SOAR at USI can provide access to articles, conference presentations, open educational resources, theses and dissertations, capstone projects, and more. SOAR at USI will make the works more discoverable, more accessible, and easier to share. SOAR at USI will launch during International Open Access Week, October 21-27, 2019. Starting on Monday, October 21, 2019, SOAR at USI can be found at Rice Library’s website by clicking on the Scholarly Communication icon and then clicking on the SOAR at USI logo. In addition, Rice Library will host two Lunch & Learn workshops during Open Access week: Basics of Open Access Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. As a part of International Open Access Week, hear about the various forms of open access publishing, its benefits and tips for authors considering open access. When: Monday, October 21, Noon to 1 p.m. Where: Business and Engineering Center room 003 PAGEforward
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SOAR at USI Your scholarship will be more discoverable and accessible when you decide to SOAR at USI. As part of International Open Access Week, the Rice Library is pleased to launch the Scholarly Open Access Repository (SOAR) at USI. Come learn about this exciting new option for USI scholars. When: Wednesday, October 23, Noon to 1 p.m. Where: Education Center 2105
SOAR at USI is administered by the Rice Library Scholarly Communication Unit. Additional services provided by the Scholarly Communication Unit include: • • • •
Reviewing open access publication venues Providing copyright information Assisting with SOAR at USI submission Holding one-on-one consultations, workshops, and group presentations
If you have questions or want to discuss SOAR at USI further, contact the Rice Library Scholarly Communication Unit at ScholComm@usi.edu, or
Peter Whiting pwhiting@usi.edu 812-465-1280
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Andrea Wright andrea.wright@usi.edu 812-464-1834
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Golden Spike continued from page 4 fast as possible to avoid the blast.” Black powder was neither cheap or efficient. “At Summit Tunnel alone, three hundred kegs of blasting powder a day went up, costing $53,000 to $67,000 per month” (Ambrose, p. 160-161). Clearly, to have any hope at completing this herculean task, another method had to be found. Nitroglycerin had been discovered in 1847 and was being utilized as a blasting agent by the early 1860s. The problem was, liquid nitroglycerin is lethally volatile. Accidental explosions had killed so many people that the state of California banned its transport. A man named James Howden was found who could manufacture it on-site since the individual ingredients could be shipped with little danger of explosion. Howden was able to produce nitroglycerin for only 75 cents per pound, and could make as much as 100 pounds per day. Moreover, nitroglycerin was far more effective than black powder. “It required fewer and shallower holes than blasting with black powder; its debris required less clean up time; and nitroglycerin worked when wet, unlike black powder. But its most significant advantage was its blasting power. In the Summit Tunnel, nitroglycerin enabled construction crews to increase their progress from 1.18 to 1.82 feet per day with progress in some areas at the bottom of the tunnel increasing from 2.51 to 4.38 feet per day.” Summit Tunnel, once estimated to take three years to create, was finished in 15 months. By early 1869, teams from the Central Pacific and Union Pacific were rapidly approaching each other in Utah. “But neither side was interested in halting construction, as each company wanted to continue to
claim the $32,000 per mile subsidy from the government. Indeed, at one point the graders from both companies, working ahead of track layers, actually passed one another as they were unwilling to concede territory to their competitors. On April 9, 1869, Congress established the meeting point in an area known as Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. Less than one month later, on May 10, 1869, locomotives from the two railroads met nose-tonose to signal the joining of the two lines. At 12:57 p.m. local time, as railroad dignitaries hammered in ceremonial golden spikes, telegraphers announced the completion of the Pacific Railway. Cannons boomed in San Francisco and Washington. Bells rang and fire whistles shrieked as people celebrated across the country. The nation was indeed united.” The accomplishment of such a feat of engineering is certainly to be applauded and celebrated. However, Manifest Destiny, as it was seen at the time, is not without cost. That cost, measured in ways other than fiscal, must be taken into account. The intense competition between the two railroads meant that corners were cut, and construction was often shoddy. So much of the track was poorly built that it had be shored up almost immediately. Three Union Pacific bridges collapsed under their own weight before they could even be tested. The Central Pacific’s Charles Crocker was instructed by his boss, Collis Huntington, “’When a cheap road will pass the Commission, make it cheap.’ He wanted Crocker to ‘run on the maximum grade instead of finishing making deep cuts and fills, and where you can make time in construction by using wood instead of stone for culverts and pilings, use wood.’ If the road washed out, Huntington advised, fix it later” (Ambrose, p. 297).
The Central Pacific's engine Jupiter and the Union Pacific's engine No. 119 meet on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah.
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It is hard to determine an accurate count of deaths because neither railroad kept good records. Most information found was about the Central Pacific. “The Central Pacific did not keep records of the deaths of any workers on the railroad, much less Chinese workers. Not knowing the fate of the Chinese workers is unnerving, and historians can only estimate the number of dead from engineering reports, newspaper articles, oral histories of descendants. Some estimate that 50 to 150 to over 1,000 Chinese workers were killed as a result of
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Golden Spike continued from page 7 snow slides, landslides, explosions, falls and other accidents. One 1868 newspaper article reports that the Chinese Six Companies organized searches for the remains of 300 along the rail line. Chinese practice was to bury the deceased temporarily and at a later date collect the remains in a box in a ritual fashion, according to spiritual beliefs. The bones would then be shipped back to China to be reburied in the worker’s home village. The Six Companies and others made great efforts to search for and repatriate the remains. One newspaper article entitled “Bones in Transit” of June 30, 1870 in the Sacramento Reporter reported that “about 20,000 pounds of bones” dug up from shallow graves were taken by train for return to China, calculating that this amounted to 1,200 Chinese. Another newspaper reported the same information, stating that only the bones of about 50 Chinese were on the train. There is no way to bridge the vast difference in estimates, but there is considerable evidence of how perilous life was for Chinese in the West overall, especially as the “Chinese Must Go” movement grew, precipitating murderous riots. Others believe that some Chinese must have also died in a smallpox outbreak among railroad workers, although there are no records indicating whether any of the dead were Chinese, and smallpox inoculation had existed in China for centuries. Charles Crocker, testifying before Congress after the line was completed, acknowledged that a great many were lost during construction – and most of those workers were Chinese.” The personal diary of Union Pacific surveyor A.N. Ferguson, in a Summer 1869 entry, noted 45 men killed by Indians, six drowned, one fell off a bridge, ten were shot in robberies or fights, and one was killed by a stray bullet while in his tent. In the alkalai desert in Wyoming, temperatures soared to 100 during the day and dropped to below freezing at night. Mules died by the dozens and were simply left trackside. Chinese workers faced a great deal of prejudice. According to Richard White, “James Harvey Strobridge [superintendent of construction for the Central Pacific, serving under Charles Crocker] was a taciturn misanthrope. He was both racist and brutal… Strobridge
hated the Chinese, and Leland Stanford, the president of the Central Pacific, had tried to exclude Chinese— the “dregs” of Asia—from California while governor” (White, p. 29-30). Chinese workers were paid less than other workers and had to supply their own food. Even the Irish, another despised minority that formed most of the work force for the Union Pacific, were paid more and were provided food. After proving themselves capable of tremendous hard work and making it possible for the Central Pacific to succeed, things were no better for the Chinese. Only 13 years after the Golden Spike was laid, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which “prohibited all immigration pertaining to Chinese laborers. One of the most drastic (and forgotten) immigration acts in American history, this act essentially criminalized an entire nationality. Chinese Americans in the west had already faced extreme discrimination and now were unable to bring their wives or family members to the United States. The law also made Chinese workers permanent aliens who legally could not become American citizens. This horrendous act wasn’t repealed until 1943 and essentially froze the Chinese American community.”
On the Union Pacific side of the fulcrum, Native Americans suffered great harm. From the signing of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1863, the government was in the business of providing land for the railroads. The problem was, the government did not own this land---it was held by Native Americans. However, this hardly proved a hindrance to Congress, as Richard White notes (White, p. 25). “The Delaware, the Kickapoo, and the Shoshone struck treaties allowing railroad development across their reservations, but each treaty was filled with fraudulent loopholes. Each treaty asserted in a key provision that the Delaware, Kickapoo, and Shoshone held “the belief that the value of their lands will be enhanced by having a railroad passing through their present reservation.” … In each treaty there were massive irregularities. The Delaware maintained that the four chiefs who signed their treaty were drunk and Anti-Chinese Handbill Poster. July 23, 1892. bribed by special lifelong salary Continued on page 9
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Golden Spike continued from page 8 provisions. Their agent, Thomas B. Sykes, was thought to have provided them with copious amounts of liquor on signing day. But the defrauding of the Delaware had two additional, more significant injustices. The first was that the treaty provided for the appointment of independent appraisers to assign a value to the lands left over after allotment. There were over 223,000 acres appraised and they extended across much of the richest prairie soil in Kansas. The railroad had to pay a minimum of $1.25 an acre but the lands were worth much more than that. When the commissioners came back with a value of $1.28 an acre, just above the minimum and far below what the lands were worth, the Delaware had little recourse for appeal. Second, the railroad company was supposed to pay $286,742.15 for the land in “gold or silver coin” but the company paid in bonds secured by 100,000 acres of the land, and then offered the remaining 123,000 acres for sale at prices from $20 to $50 an acre. Pocketing the difference, the railroad company directors put up no cash in the deal.” The coming of the railroads opened up the west to easy colonization by settlers. Settlement meant that more and more native lands were subsumed. “Hunting for sport became more popular, as passengers on trains hunted herds of bison as they rode across the Great Plains. These train-hunts were designed to both provide entertainment for passengers and to reduce food supplies for Native Americans, who relied on the bison as a staple for survival. Since Native Americans were some of the biggest opponents to westward expansion, lawmakers and railroad pundits alike supported these cruel hunting practices. Unfortunately for both the bison and Native Americans, these wasteful practices were incredibly successful in driving both populations to the edge of annihilation.” In the 1840s there were millions of buffalo, but by the late 1800s there were only some 1,200 left. Another source puts it even more bluntly: “After acquiring horses, Indians there had become heavily dependent on the plains bison for food, shelter, clothing, trade, and much more. In 1872 it was found that bison hides could be processed into commercial leather, and white hide-hunters immediately set out to meet that demand. Within a decade they had driven the millions of animals to the verge of extinction. The slaughter would
have been unlikely, probably impossible, had railroads not provided the means to ship the hides and bones off to eastern factories. In one year near the end of the carnage, 1881–1882, the Northern Pacific shipped 2,250 tons of hides from the northern plains. Once the herds were gone, plains Indians had no true option but to turn to reservations and dependence on federal support. In effect the life blood of a people had bled away through the rail lines. … Breaking native power and independence east of the Mississippi River had taken about two centuries after the first colonial settlements. Doing so west of the Mississippi took barely thirty years. Among those several forces, the revolution in movement brought by railroads must rank among the most significant. They speeded the loss of native homelands, channeled in tens of thousands of settlers, triggered devastating blows to Indian economies and allowed the military to flex its muscles against any who fought back.” The opening of the west is a complex topic, and this article only scratches the surface of one aspect. Rice Library has many resources available if you’re interested in delving deeper. The specific ones consulted and quoted are listed below, but many more can be found by using fUSIon from its link on the library’s homepage. Click here to see the results of a search on transcontinental railroad OR golden spike. This is a very broad search that includes all types of media—books, articles, DVDs, etc. in all languages. You can refine your results by choosing limits appropriate for you—English language only, peer-reviewed journals, etc. If you need more help, be sure to contact one of our reference librarians! Continued on page 10
"Rath & Wright's buffalo hide yard in 1878, showing 40,000 buffalo hides, Dodge City, Kansas." Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
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Golden Spike continued from page 9 Tangible Resources: Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 New York: Simon & Schuster, c2000. General Collection TF23 .A48 2000
Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) exhibition. Burnett, Jim. "The Last Spike" - Separating Fact From Tradition At Golden Spike National Historic Site.”National Parks Traveler online, 2013.
Golden Spike 150th Anniversary 1869-2019. Pamphlet published by Golden Spike National Historical Site/ National Park Service/U.S. Department of the Interior, 2019.
Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum website, 1988-2019.
PBS Boston/WGBH Educational Foundation. Transcontinental Railroad [videorecording] Alexandria, VA: Distributed by PBS Home Video, c2005. DVD HE2751 .T736 2006
Golden Spike National Historical Park website, 2019.
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., c2011. General Collection HE2751 .W55 2011 Online Resources: American Indians and the Transcontinental Railroad. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History: AP US History Study Guide, 2019-2019. A Brief History of Anti-Chinese Rhetoric in California. The Culture Trip Ltd., 2019.
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Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford University, 2019. Hegeman, Kimberly. Looking Back on the World's Deadliest Construction Projects. ForConstructionPros.com, 2019. Linda Hall Library. The Transcontinental Railroad website. Kansas City, MO, 2012. Thomas, William G. How Railroads Took Native American Lands in Kansas, 2010. (blog) Transcontinental Railroad. History.com editors. A&E Television Networks, 2010-2019. Transcontinental Railroad. Stanford Libraries online exhibit.
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